Boards›Player Behavior

Why not disable hate speech?

Ultrios·11/24/2017, 8:11:17 AM·1 votes·399 views

This is going to sound super obvious and maybe silly. But I can't help wondering.

RIOT has taken a zero tolerance policy on certain key words and phrases. There's no need for me to mention them here as I'm sure we can all guess or are aware of what they are.

These words genuinely should not be allowed. I agree.

So why doesn't RIOT simply disable the words from chat? It would take them a few minutes to program it and they could just not allow the words to be typed, or just auto censor them. Preferably just don't allow them to be typed so people can't guess the context.

If they truly believe and care about their zero tolerance policy, and they should, then why not just take matters into their own hands and prevent those words from being used?

RIOT has the ability and power here to do this very easily. If they want to protect their young customers and players from being exposed to this filth, don't they have an obligation to just prevent these key trigger words from ever being used? Am I crazy here? This can all be solved with very little effort. So why not just solve it?

Am I wrong? Can someone explain?

You could make the argument that people should be better and RIOT is trying to teach people to reform but it's not RIOTs job to do this. Or at least it's not their top priority. The top priority should be protecting their clients, and this can be done by simply not allowing the use of certain words to enter the chat.

I can't think of any CONs here other than you want people to improve by their own volition, but protecting others is paramount and possible here. There's no need to expose anyone to these words even once.

RIOT stop allowing it? I'm sure everyone would thank you.

7 Comments

TrulyBland11/24/2017, 3:31:51 PM3 votes

Think of one of those really easy to do hate speech filters. Try to imagine how you would implement it. Think it through.

Now ask yourself whether it would block a word comprised of characters such as ∃, 9, |, И, or Я.

Shouldn't take you long to figure out what word you can write with those... also shouldn't take you long to realize that there are a lot more ways to do this. This was literally the first way that came to mind to replace literally all characters with similar looking ones. Humans are creative and they are good at quickly recognizing patterns. Those two things in combination make it virtually impossible to ban specific words from chat.

And the next issue arises that if you somehow magically do figure out all how to properly censor all variations of hate speech, you are bound to run into problems like one that I saw recently, where somebody tried to warn his team that the enemy Pantheon is going to try to destroy the team nexus... just to have "pan is" be censored by Riot's filter and make the rest of the sentence fairly confusing to read.

So, yeah, there are indeed very easy and quick ways to program a filter like this... but I cannot come up with any one that has enough sensitivity to be actually effective and enough specificity to warrant being permanently switched on.

mosaickle11/24/2017, 8:13:39 AM2 votes

It's too diverse, and their zero tolerance doesn't mean they don't want it happening directly, but rather they'll punish those who do. It's like how free speech should be allowed by anyone, but what you do with that free speech is up to your own risk.

Basura Nephilim11/24/2017, 8:18:35 AM1 votes

If i'm a racist, I can go and N bomb you. When Riot bans the word, i'll make up a new word. Twist something, insinuate it. Too easy around a filter. Besides censoring is dumb imho. As well as the game already has a chatfilter. Which I ALWAYS have off.

Personally I don't feel Riot should be the Arbiters of ANYTHING. Other than breaking the rules of the game by feeding etc. Cause that is actually part of what they provide, the game. You can put me in a game with the most racist or political correct people and I wouldn't care if they threw racial slurs all day, or if they clutch their pearls at any moment. It's not my job, nor Riots to change who people are. You can silence them however. And that's counter productive in most cases.

General Esdeath 11/24/2017, 9:15:51 AM1 votes

Pretty sure it's censored in game already and replaced with %

Taeseuk11/24/2017, 10:15:43 AM1 votes

While this could be done, there are a few reasons it's not.

They already have a chat filter for their younger players that you have to manually turn off.

People will always purposefully find a way around the filter and it will make it more work for riot to go through all the cases they get.

It in theory helps the player vase over time, the people that say these kinds of things are usually very toxic and there for can be removed quicker making the player base have to deal with less of it each time.